As a vehicular seat material, a molded article of a foamed resin (hereinafter, referred to as foam molded article) united with a nonwoven fabric for reinforcement at the time of molding is used. This nonwoven fabric for reinforcing a foam molded article (hereinafter, referred to as nonwoven fabric for reinforcement) is arranged between a foamed resin and metal springs to exhibit functions of making the cushion action of the metal springs evenly and at the same time preventing the frictional sound generated by contact of the metal springs and the foam molded article.
For example, Patent Document 1 describes a nonwoven fabric for reinforcement obtained by layering filament nonwoven fabric layers with different porosity, that is, layering a bulky layer and a dense layer. This nonwoven fabric for reinforcement is for preventing bleeding of a foamable resin by the dense layer at the time of molding a foam molded article.
In recent years, as consumers request increasingly higher quality, a deeply drawing type foam molded article with high design properties has been required more. However, when the nonwoven fabric for reinforcement described in Patent Document 1 is used for a deeply drawing type foam molded article, since the nonwoven fabric for reinforcement is inferior in the followability to a mold, there occurs a problem that a tear is caused locally attributed to wrinkles and blisters and a foamable resin bleeds out through the tear to the surface of the bulky layer of the nonwoven fabric for reinforcement.
To avoid such a problem, Patent Document 2 describes a foam molded body reinforcing material composed of a dense layer and a base layer and having stress of 0.5 to 20 N/5 cm at the time of 5% elongation at 65° C. Although having good followability to a mold in the foam molding step, the foam molded body-reinforcing material described in Patent Document 2 has a problem that a foamable resin sometimes bleeds out to the surface of the reinforcing material at the time of a foam molding step, depending on the type of the foamable resin and also that the dimensional stability of the foam molded body-reinforcing material is inferior in a cutting/sewing step.
Patent Document 3 describes a foamed urethane-reinforcing material with increased stress of 18 N/5 cm or higher at the time of 5% elongation. Although having good dimensional stability in the cutting/sewing step, the foamed urethane-reinforcing material described in Patent Document 3 has a problem of inferior followability to a deep drawing type mold.
Patent Document 4 describes a nonwoven fabric with apparent density of 0.06 to 0.15 g/cm3 and dry heat shrinkage rate of −0.5 to 0.5% at 65° C. Although having good followability to a mold in the foam molding step, the nonwoven fabric described in Patent Document 3 has a problem of inferior durability of an obtained foam molded article.